Dec 4, 2020
Online grocery in India has been developing at a rocketing pace during the pandemic, but it is still wide open as none of the players has yet made a dent. About half of India’s $1 trillion retail markets comprises grocery sales and there is huge potential for growth.
So India’s Tata Group with combined revenue of about $113 billion has crashed into this opportunity and now is in progressive talks to buy about 80% of BigBasket in a deal that is likely to value the local online grocer backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. at about $1.6 billion.
Speculations are there that Chinese giant Alibaba was likely to dispose of its entire stake in the deal.
Mumbai-based Tata Group is exploring for local e-commerce assets at a time when the race for Indian online shoppers are heating up. While billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioMart is seeking to shake up the industry dominated by the local units of Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc., Tata is seeking potential acquisitions to narrow the gap with its rivals.
The pandemic is shortening timelines for building in-house capabilities and for Tata, Walmart’s $16 billion acquisition of Indian online retailer, Flipkart, in the summer of 2018, could serve as a playbook. Flipkart is now head to head with Amazon in the Indian market.